Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Brazilian government wants pregnant women monitored

By Julio Severo and Zenóbio Fonseca, law professor and legislative consultant

Brazilian public and private healthcare institutions will be forced, by compulsory norm, to identify and register all pregnant women in Brazil, according to the National System of Register, Surveillance and Follow-up of Pregnant Women for Maternal Mortality Prevention, established by the administration of Socialist President Dilma Rousseff in its Provisory Measure no. 557/11 in 26/12/11. A provisory measure is a legal act in Brazil through which the President of Brazil can enact laws without approval by the National Congress.

At first glance, the federal plan seems done out of concern for women, with its assumption of taking care of high-risk pregnant women, imposing prenatal exams and granting a maximum monetary aid of US $25 for prenatal and postpartum follow-up. The poorest women will jump of joy for the state generosity.

The government says that is forcing all healthcare institutions to register all the women just to know how many women are in a high-risk situation.

However, it is worthwhile to ask some questions: What is the reason for decreeing urgently a Provisory Measure right on December 26, when the whole population of Brazil, including congressmen, was distracted by Christmas? What is the reason to compulsorily register all pregnant women under the excuse of helping pregnancy if the politics and ideology of the ruling Workers’ Party of Rousseff is to legalize abortion in Brazil?

That Provisory Measure was drafted by a government full of feminists that claim that legalization of abortion strengthens the women’s human rights, who treat abortion as a “right to choose” in the cases of normal pregnancy; in other words, to abort (kill) the baby “simply” because a woman should have the freedom of deciding if she wants to continue or not a pregnancy.

It is scary that the Provisory Measure, which is already in force, has focused on the compulsory control of all pregnant women in Brazil as public healthcare issue, but it remains totally silent on the unborn baby and his value and protection.

The 3rd article, clause V, points that the focus is only a woman, never her baby:

So is it possible that there are other reasons behind the government’s plan? To establish and strengthen an obligatory system to prepare women to interrupt a pregnancy in certain cases? To implement eugenics? Let us see:

“IV: to inform, through computerized system, deaths of pregnant women, adding information about investigation on the death causes and of the measures to be taken to avoid new deaths;

“VI: to propose to federal, state, and municipal administrators of SUS (the Brazilian public healthcare system) the adoption of necessary measures to guarantee access and improve healthcare of pregnant women, and prevent maternal death.”

The most worrying fact is that the Provisory Measure limits the woman’s right to freedom when it forces her to register in a control and surveillance system just because she is pregnant, even though she has a personal health plan and is healthy, with no need for the State for anything. The Provisory Measure leaves pregnant women at the mercy of the state control and intrusion.

To remove the citizens’ freedom is not a democratic action. It is an action of totalitarian governments.

In Brazil, now it is enough for a woman to be pregnant and the State will begin, sooner or later, to control the fruit of her womb compulsorily, regardless of her choices. With such a control, it will be easy for the Brazilian government to impose the number of children that a woman can have and to demand birth control on her, as UN sees fit. After all, the compulsory register system of pregnant women in Brazil has been established to meet UN requirements.

In the short and long run, what will the Brazilian government do to regulate its control on pregnant women? What will happen to unborn babies and their protection? If the Brazilian government decides that an unborn baby with Down syndrome is a risk pregnancy and his mother decides to continue, what will the government do? If a mother has some health problem and decides that her pregnancy is to continue, what will the government do? Which “medical” pressures will a woman suffer in the compulsory system of state prenatal follow-up?

Because it removes the mothers’ freedom and completely overlooks the unborn babies’ protection, the Brazilian Provisory Measure should be denounced.

The perfect concern for mothers involves guaranteeing her full freedom and protection and the protection of life from conception on.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

At last, will Brazil have an antiterror legislation?

By Julio Severo

If the United States has a law against terror, Brazil also needs to have it. It is with that concern that Brazilian senator Aloysio Nunes Ferreira drafted a bill classifying as terrorism “the conduct of provoking or instilling terror or widespread panic through offense to the physical integrity or privation of a person’s freedom, for ideological, religious, political or social prejudice, ethnic, ‘homophobic’ or xenophobe reason. The punishment reaches 30 years of imprisonment in case of murder.”

However, the Brazilian press made it clear that such law is not an answer to the famous massacre in Rio de Janeiro, where journalists and the government itself clouded the murderer’s Islamic motivation.

The law is not also an answer to political terror. The famous Celso Daniel case has been for years accumulating corpses and cover-ups, and the Brazilian press doesn’t dare to connect it to political terror or Mafia, although everybody involved were members of the socialist, ruling Workers’ Party PT and had explicit interests to silence Celso Daniel, a Workers’ Party mayor that administered millions in illegal funds for the Workers’ Party electoral campaigns.

The senator recognized that “there is no consensus about the definition of what terrorism is.” Even so, his bill makes terror into a non-bailable and unpardonable crime, and it attacks directly the funding sources for terror.

The lack of a consensus on terror definition leaves the field open for hazy interpretations.

The Brazilian antiterror law will, basically, follow the spirit of the American law, which doesn’t aim at Muslims or Muslim motivations for terrorist crimes. In fact, after the terrorist attack to the World Trade Center in 2001, George Bush, the conservative US president, began to proclaim to the whole world that “Islam is a religion of peace.” With such “John the Baptist” of Islamic flattery preparing the road, it was perfectly natural for the next White House occupier to be not only leftist, but also radically pro-Islam.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was created specifically in response to the first, biggest terrorist attack to the US, has a lot of difficulty today to criticize Islamic radicals, although all the terrorists involved in that attack to the US were Islamic.

That picture gives us an idea on how the terror definition will come for the Brazilian law, which will follow the main concerns from the government and media, which faithfully obey Bush’s and Obama’s “doctrine”: Islam is a religion of peace. Therefore, their concern is not Islamic radicals.

The Brazilian media and government’s obsessive worry has been Christians and their “homophobia”, and each assault and murder of homosexuals in places of prostitution gives leftist journalists full opportunities to spend one week criticizing Christian “homophobia”, which “incites” assaults and murders.

How then is one to define what terrorism is in Brazil? If a journalist asks a gay activist if he considers as “terrorist” a Christian that is opposed to homosexual “marriage” or gay adoption, his answer will be a resounding “yes.” And the Brazilian government and media will pay all attention to him.

Don’t have any false expectations. If approved, the antiterror law will make Brazil take an important step for the “Americanization” of its laws.

The Reuters story explains that blogs opposed to Islam have been blacklisted by the US government. The surveillance is being executed especially by the Department of Homeland Security.

There is no information, though, that the US government is monitoring blogs and websites advocating homosexuality and Islam.

This is a very interesting surveillance: advocate Islam and sodomy, and the US government let you alone. Criticize them, and Big Brother keeps an eye on you. I know it by experience. After all, my blog was one of the first blogs to be blacklisted.

Here is the Reuters story:

Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media

Mark Hosenball

(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards."

The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture."

The document adds, using more plain language, that such monitoring is designed to help DHS and its numerous agencies, which include the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, to manage government responses to such events as the 2010 earthquake and aftermath in Haiti and security and border control related to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A DHS official familiar with the monitoring program said that it was intended purely to enable command center officials to keep in touch with various Internet-era media so that they were aware of major, developing events to which the Department or its agencies might have to respond.

The document outlining the monitoring program says that all the websites which the command center will be monitoring were "publicly available and... all use of data published via social media sites was solely to provide more accurate situational awareness, a more complete common operating pictures, and more timely information for decision makers..."

The DHS official said that under the program's rules, the department would not keep permanent copies of the internet traffic it monitors. However, the document outlining the program does say that the operations center "will retain information for no more than five years."

The monitoring scheme also features a five-page list, attached to the privacy review document, of websites the Department's command center expected to be monitoring.

CONTROVERSIAL SITES

These include social networking sites Facebook and My Space - though there is a parenthetical notice that My Space only affords a "limited search" capability - and more than a dozen sites that monitor, aggregate and enable searches of Twitter messages and exchanges.

Among blogs and aggregators on the list are ABC News' investigative blog "The Blotter;" blogs that cover bird flu; several blogs related to news and activity along U.S. borders (DHS runs border and immigration agencies); blogs that cover drug trafficking and cybercrime; and websites that follow wildfires in Los Angeles and hurricanes.

News and gossip sites on the monitoring list include popular destinations such as the Drudge Report, Huffington Post and "NY Times Lede Blog", as well as more focused techie fare such as the Wired blogs "Threat Level" and "Danger Room." Numerous blogs related to terrorism and security are also on the list.

Some of the sites on the list are potentially controversial. WikiLeaks is listed for monitoring, even though officials in some other government agencies were warned against using their official computers to access WikiLeaks material because much of it is still legally classified under U.S. government rules.

Another blog on the list, Cryptome, also periodically posts leaked documents and was one of the first websites to post information related to the Homeland Security monitoring program.

Also on the list are JihadWatch and Informed Comment, blogs that cover issues related to Islam through sharp political prisms, which have sometimes led critics to accuse the sites of political bias.

Also on the list are various video and photo-sharing sites, including Hulu, Youtube and Flickr.

While a DHS official involved in the monitoring program confirmed the authenticity of the list, officials authorized to speak for the Department did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

My strange visitors

United States Army Information System Command headquarters visiting my pro-family blog?

By Julio Severo

The Department of Homeland Security. The Human Rights Campaign. The USAISC headquarters. These were some of my strange visitors in the last six months.

On July 27 and 29, 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appeared in my tracking report visiting my English blog. About this visit, WorldNetDaily, the most important conservative news website in English, reported,

“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun watching a blog posted by a Christian who was forced to flee Brazil because of the conflict between that nation’s pro-homosexual ‘hate crimes’ agenda and his advocacy for traditional marriage. Exactly why the U.S. government, which several times has linked Christians and conservatives with terrorism, is watching Julio Severo’s unabashedly Christian Last Days Watchman blog isn’t clear. A WND request to the DHS for comment did not generate a response”.

DHS refused to answer regarding its intentions or visits to my blog. But the intents of the Obama administration are not obscure. Last month, the US government announced that advancing the homosexual agenda would be one of its top foreign policy priorities, and directed all of its embassies, consulates and other US government entities that operate overseas to make this agenda a priority.

So if gay activists enjoy the top favor with the US government, are opponents of the gay agenda in the “hit list”? Probably, they are not yet aiming at pro-family Christians to kill them, but certainly to kill their ministries and financial resources.

On August 21, 2011, the Human Rights Campaign was recorded visiting my blog in a tracking report. This is the most powerful homosexual organization in America. In the next few days, AllOut, a heavily-funded gay group, launched an online petition campaign to have accounts of 10 pro-family groups cut off from PayPal. Even though I am not an organization, my name was included in this public gay campaign, and my account was closed. To me, PayPal explained that I am ineligible to receive donations from my friends and readers because “you are not a registered non-profit organization”. To AllOut, PayPal explained that they closed my account because “We take very seriously any cases where a user has incited hatred, violence or intolerance because of a person’s sexual orientation”.

Now, I can no longer receive donations from my friends through PayPal. Again, WorldNetDaily denounced the attack against my blog.

I wonder what would have happened if a homosexual activist had had his PayPal account closed after a Christian conservative campaign. Probably, he would be able to walk into any US embassy and consulate anywhere in the world and say, “Hey, I am a gay under persecution from conservative Christians. PayPal even closed my account because of these Christians!” He would be immediately put at the front of the line to migrate to the United States as an Obama-favored individual and receive legal assistance to sue PayPal!

The latest visitor: the United States Army Information System Command (USAISC)

The latest visitor to my blog was the strangest: the visit was tracked directly to the United States Army Information System Command (USAISC) headquarters! If my English blog has a fan there, I wonder if USAISC, which has a secure, sophisticated, internal communication system, allows its visitors or military employees to access external internet.

The United States is one of the leading Christian nations in the world, but has a government that has been actively promoting the gay agenda through its “aid” agencies and embassies. And since USAISC is part of the US government, it would be no wonder if it has been monitoring opposition to the new US “interests”. What is important to gay activists is important to the US government, and recently The Advocate, the largest gay magazine in America, took a recent look at my blog. So why can’t the gay-friendly Department of Homeland Security, Human Rights Campaign and USAISC headquarters take a “look” too?

I would like to think that the strange visitor to my blog is just a sign that I have a friend in the USAISC headquarters. If not, the Christian answer to military threats should be the same answer given by Elisha: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (2 Kings 6:16 ESV)

Besides, God has his own armies and he can destroy any wicked army: “And that night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.” (2 Kings 19:35 ESV)

Even though the US Army has many Christian members, God has no commitment to bless or protect a government actively promoting homosexuality, abortion and other evils around the world.

May Christian men in the US Army advance God’s Kingdom while the US government and its army are fighting it.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Gay Pressure on PayPal Named as Fourth Top Anti-Christian Act of 2011

Commentary byJulio Severo

Americans were asked to name the top 10 Anti-Christian Acts of 2011 in the US, and the fourth place was given to the homosexual effort to close PayPal accounts from a list of ten Christian organizations, including me. For a long time I have been under attack from Brazilian gay activists. But this was the first time that an American gay group blacklists me with major Christian groups.

Read the full article here:

Top Anti-Christian Acts of 2011 Revealed

The year 2011 saw plenty of anti-Christian rhetoric in the media—and plenty of anti-Christian acts against every day Joes and Janes standing up for what they believe.

DefendChristians.Org, a ministry of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, asked its members to vote on the top 10 anti-Christian acts of 2011 in the U.S.

"I am always surprised at the results of our poll and this year is no exception," says Dr. Gary Cass of DefendChristians.Org. "The fact the No. 1 and No. 2 issues are public policy and political in nature shows Christians are very concerned about the political direction of the country. I wouldn't be surprised if this translates into a strong political response in 2012."

Here are the results of the voting:

10. NBC television network twice took the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance in its lead up to the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club.

9. In Franklin, Mass., a pro-life man was beaten by the police for peacefully handing out pro-life materials. The police accused him of conspiring to plant bombs.

8. A Christian man in Minnesota was fired from his job because one of his female co-workers attended a Bible study that his wife led.

7. A Christian Florida teacher was suspended after school administrators discovered his support of traditional marriage posted on the Internet.

6. In Kalispell, Mon., pro-lifers were attacked by a firebomb during a prayer vigil in front of an abortion clinic. No one was hurt, but a police officer remarked pro-lifers should expect this sort of reaction to their activities.

5. Because of a complaint filed by the ACLU, the liberal 9th Circuit Court ruled that the Mt. Soledad War Memorial in San Diego was unconstitutional.